


A Thousand Lives

by dollyboy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Existentialism, M/M, Parallels, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 02:51:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6593770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyboy/pseuds/dollyboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”<br/>― Kiersten White</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Lives

“Don’t go where I can’t follow.” The words leave an echo; an aftertaste. Jean doesn’t quite understand them or the overflowing sadness in Marco’s eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he answers, truthfully. He’s here to stay, right here on the other side of the bed, where he can always find Marco first thing in the morning; the last thing at night before he falls asleep. It makes Marco smile a smile where the corners of his mouth barely move, barely display an emotion, but Jean knows every facial expression there is to him. He can see through the veil of uncertainty that Marco holds before him at times, when he hides behind himself. Jean smiles for the both of them.

 

Then Marco dies. Jean can’t find him on the other side of the bed anymore, the sheets stay cold and untouched through the night. The light has gone out permanently and he can’t relight it, the sun doesn’t come out during the days. It stays behind the clouds that seem to fill the sky until it looks like it might collapse with the weight of them, and Jean can’t tell the difference between dawn and dusk. The things Marco owns; owned; mixed in with his, he throws them all out. Sets them on fire, follows how they slowly turn to ash. He tries to erase Marco’s existence, determined to get faster to the other side of his grief. Only when he’s thrown everything out, Marco’s scent, his ghost, still lingering in the air, he gives up. He gives into the grief, stops trying to get past it. There, he gets stuck. He stays.

 

Every street lamp he passes seems to travel faster the further he gets, until their lights melt together in just one, continuous stream of light. It bounces against the dark, starless sky and disappears when he drives off the road where the lamps don’t follow. The headlights of his car, they sweep the uneven ground, helplessly trying to push the darkness back and away.

Marco sits on the front seat, his face calm, peaceful. The car hits a bump, bounces, the lights flickering and shaking, leaving them in the complete darkness for a passing moment. Just for that moment, they can see the stars above, or they could if they looked up.

“You should slow down,” Marco speaks, and his voice is so familiar, so safe, but at the same time, it’s not his. It hasn’t been his ever since Jean stood under the sunless sky and watched the ground swallow the coffin of his dead lover.

“I don’t want to live without you.” His voice, he hears it like Marco must’ve heard it. It’s distant and dull and he could live to never hear it again.

“I know, but it’s not really up to us, is it.” The narrow, almost overgrown road ahead of them disappears completely, the headlights flickering as they hit another bump, but Jean won’t slow down. He won’t.

“It’s not fair,” he says with the air of a broken man.  “You never did anything wrong, how is it _fair_.”

 

The sky above them, it’s lit with stars now. They’re brighter than Jean has ever seen and staring at them, he feels like he could understand all the secrets of the universe right here, right now. He could see and understand them all and then, never again. They’d slip from his grasp, from between his fingers, to the dusty ground they’d disappear amongst the rest of the fallen kings. The grass underneath his bare hands, it feels cold and damp with the summer night mist.

“How are we here?” he murmurs, never taking his eyes off the glimmering stars. The galaxy curves over them, leaves them under its crown.

“I don’t know, you chose it.” Marco is right next to him. His eyes are cast to the sky, too, the hundreds of little lights reflecting in them, millions and millions of miles away.

“How can you be so calm, how doesn’t it bother you at all?” The unnatural silence around them amplifies his voice by a thousand, turns it into a yell, and it continues and echoes a long time after he’s stopped talking.

“Because I’m not really here,” Marco replies, and Jean hopes to whatever higher force is watching over them for him to turn his head, to look at Jean. He doesn’t. He stares at the stars, unblinking, and Jean realises he’s solved the biggest mystery of all already.

“Am I dead?” The question leaves an echo; an aftertaste.

With the thousands of stars still in his eyes, he looks at Jean. One by one, the lights go out, not with a bang but with a quiet hiss. “I can’t answer that.”

“So can I stay here, with you?”

“No.” The lights have gone out completely. There’s just darkness behind his eyes now. “You’ll have to go eventually.”

“I don’t wanna go, not without you.” He cries. How sad it is of him that he could never cry when Marco died. He couldn’t cry and now, in a place between life and death where the air stands still and it’s too warm and too cold at the same time, he cries; he wails. He hasn’t cried like this since he was a little boy but this time, there are less tears. His sobs are dry and aching and making his eyes itch, and he can’t stop. “I don’t wanna be so alone.”

“You’re not alone, Jean.” There’s no comfort in his words, and Jean knows why. Marco isn’t really here. He’s starting to fade already, the corners of the dream are shrinking, curling into themselves, like burning paper.

“What happens when I wake up from this?” Jean tries desperately, holds onto his lover until the stars have fallen from the sky and the grass has turned yellow and died. “Please tell me what happens when I wake up.” Marco is a mere reflection now. He’s see-through, like a projection thrown against a wall; black and white.

“I don’t know,” he replies, his voice hollow and carried out by images rather than sound. His being is like static on a television screen, and he flickers. “You’ll have to find out yourself.”

“Don’t leave me,” and then he remembers the words from a long time ago, from a different lifetime where he was still unbroken. “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” He didn’t understand it then, and reaching to the other side, his arm stretching and desperately searching until he can feel the softness of the sheets under his cold hand, until his fingertips reach Marco’s skin, the freckles travelling up to his shoulder and there to his neck, his eyes full of _love_ and _wonder_ , he understands it now.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Marco answers, truthfully.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Nothing of this really screams 'click me, read me, love me!', so I'm really grateful you decided to do it anyway. It's one of those things I could write forever and never be satisfied, so that's why I deliberately left it really short. If you liked it or if you have theories, ideas, criticism, do share them. I'll love you forever.


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